How would you react, if an entire city vanished before you?

If your eyes, stinging from sweat, flickered back to a city of stone, near a million people still living inside, only to see it vanish under the evening sun? Only a few steps away, what was once an outer wall, now replaced by a jagged cliff. The ocean water, which had been kept away by the city, now crashing down, rushing in to fill the void. The cold, salty wind, blowing away tears and sweat and blood from your eyes, and the water rushing in all too quickly, slamming itself against cliffs that hadn't been there before. What would you do, if the very ground you had been running on just a few seconds before, was simply gone, and now there was nothing but the sea and salted air?

What would you do, if you were alone?

Would you panic, your lungs collapsing into themselves, and struggling to find a moment to breathe? Would you gasp, astonished, and sketch the scene in your mind to make sure you'd never forget a moment? Or would you scream, terrified, into the unknown?

I did not scream, or gasp, or struggle to breathe. I had no spirit from which to scream, the shock in my blood kept my fear at bay, and my lungs had already been struggling from my race from the city.

Instead, I turned on my heels and ran. I ran until my legs gave way beneath me into forest moss floors. I ran until my heartbeat screamed out against my ribcage, threatening to fail unless I slowed. I ran until my body reminded me so violently of the culmination and weight of every moment of my twenty five years in this life pressing against every corner of my being. I wanted to collapse there and then, before I'd even taken a step. I needed to breathe. I needed a moment of peace that only death could have given me.

And yet, I ran.

I ran until I could no longer live with my failures, and I collapsed in front of an inn at the crossroads. The dirt and sweat-plastered hair in my mouth tasted like fresh cherries being tossed into my mouth from across the room by Lyana. That might have just been the exhaustion. It was so sweet, so perfect. And it wasn't real.

Lyana was gone. I would never taste those cherries again. Her laugh, her smile, her words, were gone for good.

Senvia, the capital of the empire, was gone.

My entire life, replaced by the sea.

That's the moment I broke.

I had been Xera of the Royal Guard. Wielder of the rock crystal ring, Stoneguard, and third advisor to Her Grace, Empress Lyana. After her death, I had been the second advisor to His Grace, Emperor Alaric.

After, I was just a woman standing there, watching the sea crash against the crumbling cliffs where the city of Senvia used to be. It was not my twice failure, not the death of the second emperor under my protection in the same week, not the screams of my comrades as they were slaughtered, not even the exhaustion itself.

No. What broke me was the sea. The cold shock of it, the spray of saltwater on my face, the autumn air catching in my throat when the rushing winds came with the smell of kelp and driftwood. That feeling of salt on my skin persisted, even as I collapsed leagues away from the ocean.

I don't know how long I stayed out there, in the dirt in front of the nameless inn at the crossroads. Hours, I think. At most, it would have been overnight. Someone must have seen me in fair short time. I was a dark skinned woman in fine armour and pouring sweat, face down and unconscious in the dirt. I was too suspicious-looking to not be noticed. Even had they not seen the Kindred in me, the raw power coursing through the very fabric that made up who I was, I still stood out too much even among knights and warriors.

But nobody touched me until I woke.